Commercial Real Estate Coworking Mixed Use Occupancy

How To Retrofit Right Using Baseline Footfall

October 13, 2025

Many retrofit projects fail because decisions lack solid usage data. Establishing a reliable baseline of footfall, occupancy and dwell time is the difference between CapEx as a bet and CapEx as a business case - enabled through privacy-first video analytics from existing camera networks.

Why Retrofits Underperform (and How to Stop It)

Amenities frequently underutilise despite significant investment - empty lounges, overcrowded gyms, repurposed meeting rooms. The root cause is consistently the same: decisions made without hourly space usage data. Video analytics extract baseline information before anyone lifts a tile, converting capex into evidence-backed strategy rather than well-intentioned guesswork.

What a Baseline Really Needs to Include

Comprehensive baselines must capture footfall by zone, occupancy and dwell times, amenity-specific usage, modal share (transportation modes used to access the building), and seasonal or event-driven variations. Fyma delivers these as decision-ready metrics by defining regions of interest within existing camera views and processing entirely anonymously.

The Baseline-to-Blueprint Workflow

A six-step process: connect existing cameras, define regions matching design intent, capture hourly usage profiles over a representative period, prioritise amenity mix by occupancy rates, model interventions before committing capital, and standardise KPIs across the portfolio so results are comparable across sites and over time.

Privacy-by-Design, Always

Privacy cannot be retrofitted. Fyma processes video to metrics without exposing personally identifiable information - no faces stored, no individual tracking. Retention controls and exports contain only counts and timings, making compliance straightforward and stakeholder adoption significantly easier.

How to Calculate Retrofit ROI with Confidence

Build your business case using four inputs: cost per square metre of the proposed change, quantified avoided-rework expenses from past over-investments, modelled net operating income impacts from improved utilisation, and operational savings from better-aligned staffing and cleaning schedules. Track post-occupancy performance against baseline to validate the model and improve future decisions.

Why Video Analytics (Not Just Sensors or Wi-Fi)?

Video provides the granularity to distinguish specific equipment items and zones within a space. It works across existing camera networks without new hardware, offers directional and contextual data that sensors cannot match, and enables standardised comparable metrics across all locations in a portfolio - something ad-hoc sensor deployments rarely deliver.

A Retrofit Checklist You Can Use Tomorrow

Review archived footage from any two representative weeks. Define six to ten regions of interest. Analyse hourly profiles with weekday and weekend breakdowns. Rank amenities by utilisation rate. Build individual business cases for each proposed change. Launch post-occupancy evaluation within four weeks of go-live to validate results against your baseline.